


New Wonders

by Fabrisse



Category: Alice (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignettes of Hatter's first year in Manhattan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Wonders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dexwebster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dexwebster/gifts), [mycha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mycha/gifts).



> This is loosely based on two Yuletide 2012 prompts.

Mad could mean so many things. Was he angry? Yes, often, but not like the March Hare was. Hatter controlled his well, knew where it should be directed and did his best not to take it out on anyone else. Was he crazy? If you'd asked him yesterday, he would have said no. After meeting Alice, though, he thought the answer was less definitive.

There was a lull. Not a long one, if nothing else being around this particular oyster kept him busy, but in that very, very brief lull, she asked him, "How did you start selling your tea?"

He could have said he was forced. In some small way, that might even be true. The deeper truth was he'd wanted experiences and someone, his predecessor -- a little crocodile if ever there was one -- had offered him a drop of any of the teas for free. He'd looked closely at the selection and asked for a taste of joy. The sensation overwhelmed him, passed through him, and left him humble. The joy, the perfection of that moment, was unearned. 

He never took another hit, but his unwillingness to sample the product made him very, very good at being a distributor. 

***  
Walking around Alice's world was … different. Every once in awhile, he thought he saw a card or someone else he knew from Wonderland, but in the next moment the features resolved into strangers going about their lives.

Sometimes he wanted to scream at them. They were capable of so much, of _feeling_ so much, but they spent their days going from residence to job to residence -- so little effort and so little life. 

Alice looked at him after a month and said, "Let's go."

He thought, maybe, they'd go out to the country or to a movie, something as mundane as everyone else. Instead, she'd walked him into a massive building and paid for entrance to a museum.

Alice said, "What do you want to see first?"

Hatter looked at the building and said, "I don't know."

She smiled. "Let's start with the Impressionists."

Color and the play of light on blossoms or flesh or stone dazzled his eyes. Here were pieces of canvas that distilled the emotions as much as any sample of tea could. He ran from a clear Sisley showing a row of trees, to an arch of rock over the sea by Monet, and then back to a wheatfield by Van Gogh. 

Alice sat down on a bench and stared at a Pissarro still life to allow her Hatter his privacy.

"You knew about this?" he said.

"Everyone does, or should," she replied.

"Can you do this?"

Alice shook her head. "I don't draw well. I'm a pretty good dancer. I can carry a tune. But I'm not good enough to do either professionally."

He peered at a Degas ballet girl. "That's dancing?"

Alice laughed. "It's one kind. There's a dance festival next week. The tickets are cheap. Want to go?"

Hatter nodded, his eyes drawn to a Renoir portrait. "Can we stay here? Can we come back?"

"Yes, to both. And there are other museums all over the city."

Hatter turned to her, eyes filled with wonder, and kissed her.

***  
The dance festival was a success. Hatter spent the next several nights trying to move his body into shapes like the ones he'd seen. Alice brought him along to her dojo and started him with the basics of movement -- her type of movement. 

When Christmas came, she gave him ten dance lessons at a local studio and her mother gave him pastels, paper, and basic introduction to drawing classes.

In the meantime, Hatter had found a job at a local bakery/patisserie. It had only taken him a month before his customer service skills put him in line to manage a shift. He'd surprised his bosses when he'd asked instead, if he could learn to bake. After some consultation, they offered to pay for his food handlers license classes, if he agreed to manage the shift until he passed the exam.

Hatter agreed.

***  
A year had passed since he left Wonderland. Occasionally, a face would still call out to him, making him remember, but more often now, Hatter would speculate about the inner lives of those he passed.

Some of them were dull and only went from home to office and back again. But now, he caught the spark in the eyes, the moment of creativity. There was an accountant in his drawing class, who could suggest a landscape in a few strokes of charcoal. One of the secretaries in his dance class could move him to tears with just a flutter of her hand. And Alice's smile flooded him with hope every time he saw it.

There were oysters in this world, but they were few and far between. Mostly, there were people who had their small moments of transcendence. Just yesterday, a small girl had clapped when she saw a pastry swan and her father had grinned as he asked one of the assistants to wrap it up.

Alice came into the shop, and he presented her with a carrot cupcake iced with a white rabbit. She grinned at him and said, "Time to go home."

***  
He wasn't angry any more. That was good. He had a home with Alice and a life that pleased him. Maybe he was still mad, though, there were some who thought he was crazy. He just thought it was time to create his own joy.


End file.
